Graveyards
by nimacu
Summary: In the DC Universe nothing is sacred, even death. When a company starts to fail and a body goes missing an old friend of Oliver and Tommy's shows up to save the day and possibly steal the girl.
1. Chapter 1

In the wake of the most horrific tragedy to face a United States city outside times of war they held a small funeral. The weather was beautiful and sunny, it was almost as if God was sending a reminder to Starling City that life would go and things would get better.

They hadn't announced the funeral, planning it quickly to avoid a media storm.

Oliver left that day. He left Thea, Laurel and Diggle. Felicity though? She'd seen right through him and was waiting in the dusty, broken remainders of the Foundry. When he'd come to collect his chest she'd railed into him, told him if he left when his city needed him the most he'd be no more than a coward and a fake. He pretended to not see her tears as he told her he already was. She'd thrown an envelope at him that had been full of cash and false identification. She'd silently broken down and he pretended not to see, though it'd pierced him in place he thought no longer existed that the envelope meant she'd never really believed he'd stay.

Three months later, Walter called him home. He knew she'd be tracking that fake identity, part of him felt less guilty knowing she wouldn't have to worry about where he was. He didn't think she'd ever tell anyone, she must have really thought it was important to come home. He can admit to himself that was part of the reason he agreed to it.

He'd hung up, without even saying a word to Walter the first dozen times he called, but when Walter showed up in the middle of the night at his motel door he'd let him him in. He knew deep down he wanted to be home and he knew he never should have left.

Thea wasn't talking to him.

Diggle had quit and refused to take his calls.

Laurel cried and refused to come to the door when he'd tried to see her.

Felicity...well, he hadn't had the nerve to face her. He'd gone to her first, as soon as he was back in the city. She'd been laughing in her office, talking to a co-worker. She'd seemed happy and it occurred to him that he'd ruin it if she saw him so he walked away.

That left him with Tommy, or Tommy's Grave at least.

It was raining, the kind of drizzling you tell yourself won't be that bad until you're out in it and it seeps into your clothes and leaves you cold in ways that drying off can't fix.

He expected to be the only person in cemetery sloshing through the Autumn leaves.

But he wasn't...

A thin man with dark hair stood at Tommy's grave. As Oliver approached him he recognized the profile. Apart from the day of the funeral he hadn't seen this man in over eight years. Once upon a time they had been the three amigos, sons of the captains of industry. But maturity separates men from boys and Dick Grayson had matured so much faster than he and Tommy. Like most good things he'd ruined their friendship with his juvenile and insecure behavior.

He wasn't sure what to say to him, and if he was still the same man; then Dick would probably do most the talking anyway.

"So, I probably should have sent a "I'm glad you were rescued from a deserted island" fruit basket last year. And I am... glad that is. That you were rescued from the island." The half smile Dick gave as he talked was so familiar that seeing it was almost comforting in away. Oliver could remember many times where that half smile and innocent face had gotten all of three of them out of or into a lot of trouble.

Dick paused for a moment, seeming to gather his thoughts.

"All the stupid crap between us didn't seem to matter so much when you died." His voice broke just a bit on the next part "Tommy and I... we mended fences. He did a lot of growing up and I learned not to take myself so seriously." Dick's voice changed sounding so tired "I was angry with you for so long that when you were gone all that was left was a hole and I couldn't help but think "Why didn't I forgive him sooner?""

"Because I was an jackass?" Oliver said it with a snort

"You did pee on me" Dick's right eyebrow raised

"You arrested me"

"Even?" Dick shrugged

"Definitely" Oliver could almost feel a smile on his face, they stood in companionable silence.

The other man's voice turned serious "Do you remember the last time we were in a graveyard together? We buried my little brother, I didn't like to think of him as anything more than the hoodlum kid Bruce brought home...but really? He was my brother, I swore I wasn't going to miss him but you and Tommy still showed up in Gotham and sat with me at his grave while I drank enough to down a small elephant."

Dick seemed to pull himself up and stand straighter before making his next comment "I'm sure you need some time alone here, it was nice seeing you" He turned to walk away when Oliver interrupted him.

"What are you in Starling City for?"

"Somebody needs to be"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Oliver was immediately irked, apparently Dick could still get under his skin.

"Bruce holds a lot of stock in Queen Consolidated, I'm here to make sure there's not a take-over. I've been working with Walter to keep the wolves at bay. Bruce and your father were friends their whole lives, he doesn't want to see the company disappear."

"What better way to show support than to send the eldest heir to the Wayne fortune? You were always so much better at being a son than I was." Oliver was almost shocked at the bitterness in his tone, he thought he'd moved past that a long time ago. Dick always made being a son seem so easy, he was a better adopted son than Oliver had ever been to his own parents.

"I have my moments" Dick smiled at him, nothing really ever shook him, always a sarcastic response or cheesy one-liner no matter the situation. Another thing Oliver remembered envying about the other man.

"Where's Malcolm grave?" Oliver jumped to a different subject without any segway, for some reason even though he was conflicted about Dick's appearance in town he didn't really want to be left here alone.

"He doesn't have one, his body went missing from the morgue during all the chaos after the earthquake. To be honest, the cops weren't real big on wasting resources tracking it down. Not that they would have found it if they did."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He growled, he hadn't really meant to but...

"Mr. Merlyn's contingency plans had contingency plans" The way Dick said it, it was almost like he knew...knew that he'd been on the roof with Malcolm, but there was no way that could be. Only five people knew that and two of them were dead.

"Just say what you mean Dick" Olive bit out, his voice lower than he intended.

Dick remained silent as he shrugged and raised a hand in a half wave and walked away


	2. Chapter 2

Felicity liked to think the last 18 months had taught her a great number of lessons. One of the more useful ones was "Always be aware of your surroundings". In her pre-Oliver life (she thinks of things these days as pre-Oliver and post-Oliver) she would often find herself paying little attention to anything apart from what was currently in her line of vision. It was great when you're trying to reverse engineer the newest smart phone (a girl has to have her fun). But not so great when there were people actively trying to kill you.

At least she was pretty sure (100% sure actually) someone was actively trying to kill her, she was the only known associate of the vigilante (she was so sick of that word) ever identified by the police, it wasn't a huge stretch of the imagination that there would be people looking to "speak" with her. She'd been doing a lot of thinking of her own in the last three months, and no matter which way around she thought or what she said to convince herself she didn't think Malcolm Merlyn's death was the end of "_The Undertaking_" (she always saw it in italics in her head when she thought it).

It started six weeks ago, at least she thought it did. She would be lying if she didn't admit to at least herself the previous eight weeks had been spent being preoccupied with hating Oliver for leaving and in equal measure missing him more than she thought possible. It didn't help her state of mind that while Diggle would check on her safety several times a week and stay for hours drinking coffee or beer in her kitchen (even though she told him she didn't need babysat) he didn't seem to actually want to talk about what had happened.

After she spent one Tuesday evening after he left on WebMD and Wikipedia diagnosing him with PSTD she realized that maybe she wasn't the only who was suffering and she made more of an effort to get over Oliver Queen. He wasn't the most important man in the Universe and based on the way he had behaved she couldn't even afford to make him the most important man in _her_ Universe. She started seeking John and Carly out, making an effort to leave her apartment for something other than work.

She realized something else? It worked. She was moving on, or at least until people started trying to kill her.

It started innocently enough, she was walking to the parking lot two blocks from her office at Queen Consolidated (no more parking garages for her, thank you) and she looked both ways and started to cross a street when out of no where a car careens around the corner straight at her. If a random stranger hadn't pulled her out of harm's way she'd have been a Felicity Pancake.

Well, if she was being honest the man who pulled her out of harm's way no longer qualified as a random (though still a stranger) as he'd been at the scene of several more of her "close scrapes". She never got a good look at him though, all dark shadows and her trying not to hyperventilate from the near death experiences.

After the third "accident" where it was clear her break lines had been cut (the second being an attempted mugging Mr. Dark and Mysterious had stopped) she decided she wasn't going to keep playing the damsel in distress, she didn't need a new hero to come in and save her. She knew the man wasn't Oliver; she knew well and good exactly where Oliver was and it wasn't here to save her from the bogey-men. She was perfectly capable of saving herself.

She decided she'd be her own hero, she may not be able to go all "grrr...you've failed this city" but she could do more with computers than most people could imagine. She moved back into the lair under Verdant, upgrading the computers. With Oliver missing, no one was interested in the empty building anyway. Her intentions had been to keep herself under 24 hour surveillance so she could find out what in the hell was happening to her and once she figured it out she'd make sure someone paid. If in the mean time she committed a little hacking here and there to bring ruin to a few names that may or may not have been in the book it didn't matter. That was just busy work, figuring out who was trying to kill her was the important stuff.

The "accidents" continued and she'd review the footage over and over again but for some reason each time she was in clear site of danger all the CCTV footage would die, static. She knew static like that didn't just happen and it wasn't a coincidence and it was frustrating. In desperation she turned to John, who was livid she'd not told him before. He railed into her and she'd been expecting it and knew she deserved it so she let him. He told her he'd help her and that they'd figure it out as he gave her one of his "I'm the big brother and I'll take care of it" hugs.

That night, she thought that was that; he'd show up at the Foundry in the morning and they'd tackle this by themselves. But at 4 AM she got a text

"This is his fault Felicity, you have to bring him home."

And so she did.


End file.
